Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]

Startup To Watch: CausaLens

Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.

This week we’re interviewing Apostolos Lymperis, Business Growth Strategist at CausaLens – a London deeptech startup that leads causal AI research, which is a major step towards developing true AI. Their technology transforms organisations by autonomously discovering valuable insights that optimise business outcomes. Their flagship product, a Causality Infused AutoML for time-series, goes beyond both traditional machine learning and AutoML – it has become the industry standard in the financial sector and other industries.

What would you say CausaLens’s mission is?

Our startup mission is to develop Causal AI. We’re developing Artificial Intelligence that understands cause and effect and can solve the most challenging problems. For example, there are some challenging problems in financial markets and static AI models can’t really solve them. Traditional AI doesn’t properly work in dynamic, complicated systems like this.

What are your values as an ambitious startup?

One of our values is drive and resilience. In order to succeed as a growing startup, we need people that are willing to take the initiative and be bold. Our product is still developing, so we love it when people take ownership of tasks and drive innovation. We find that really happens when people are passionate about our mission and what we’re trying to achieve.

Another one of our company values is trust and accountability. When you care about what you’re doing and feel that you’re contributing to a great vision – you want to be accountable for what you’re doing. We want everyone to feel that we are attributing and making movements towards that vision!

Lastly, we want our startup employees to be kind and inspirational. We’re a small team, and kindness and trustworthiness are vital if we’re to feel comfortable around each other. We spend a lot of time together (and many nights!), so being able to feel comfortable and trust the people around us is super important. As for inspiration – we are doing a lot of hard work and need the people around us to continually inspire and contribute to the higher vision. Our product is driven by innovation, so it’s important that we are motivated and inspire each other.

What has your growth been like?

CausaLens was founded in 2017 by Darko Matovski and Maksim Sipos, and has been growing pretty rapidly since! Two years ago we were a team of 5 and now we’re a team of 20. In a year from now we’re looking to be 40-50, so we’re definitely a startup looking to hire!

We’ve also hit various milestones along the way. We’ve closed two major seed funding rounds (one of which was one of the biggest startup seed funding in Europe) and we’ve started working with some of the most sophisticated organisations in finance. Our client roster is growing day by day and it’s exciting to witness and be a part of. To add to the excitement, we’re moving to a cool new startup office in Hammersmith! This is necessary to support our growth.

What does 2020 hold in store for CausaLens?

We want to be the go-to place for causal AI. We also want to attract more top engineers and scientists as this will help us develop our product offering. If you’re a world class researcher that’s passionate about our mission – please do get in touch, we’d love to work with you.

Additionally, we want to cement ourselves as the industry standard in finance. We already have a very good reputation here and clients from all over the world, but we’re looking to grow our client base. As well as exploring this market further, we’re looking to diversify and bring value to other industries such as logistics and transportation. We have a few cool projects in the works, but they’re customer sensitive so I have to keep my lips sealed (for now)!

I would also say that our primary focus for startup hiring is London. We’re a tight-knit team and prefer having all of our engineers in one place – it’s easier to work through things this way and develop our product offering. However, in the long run I could definitely see us opening offices in other big financial sectors. This is still some way off, though!

What do you look for in an employee?

When hiring for our startup, we look for people that match our values and are excited about our vision of optimising the global economy. There are so many inefficiencies in the global economy and we want to eradicate (or at least reduce) these. If you embrace the value of our vision and are excited about the technologies we are building, then that’s a strong motivation for applying. Passion is, without a doubt, the most important thing!

We’re also growing extremely fast and as a result appreciate people that take initiative, are accountable and are driven. These are the people that bring huge value to CausaLens. How far we get is ultimately up to every individual that works here.

Additionally, we’re looking for people with scientific minds. Over 70% of our employees hold PhDs in quantitative fields, which should give you an indication of the technology we’re building and the employees we attract. Many of our engineers bring their research to our product and it has gotten better as a result. And if you’re not technically a developer but can still code as well, you’re a double threat! We don’t want to be a place where our research will be applied in 20 years, we want to build technology that can be applied now as this is where we can drive value.

We also look for people that are personable and friendly. We’re a tight-knit group (there are currently only 20 of us) and know each other really well. We often go out for drinks together and do things outside of work – so we look for people that want to get involved and become part of our startup family.

Do you have any advice for young people founding their own startup?

Be bold! And be ambitious. Founding your own startup takes a lot of time, patience and sleepless nights. It also requires you to make sacrifices. This is only really worth it if you’re building something that you’re passionate about and think can make a big impact. The VC world appreciates ingenuity and impactful ideas too, and is prepared to invest big in game changing technology.

So, set the bar high and make sure your startup idea contributes some greater idea/value to the world. Even if you fail (and 90% of startups do) it will be a great learning experience and you’ll cultivate resilience. You’ve got to adopt the mindset that the sky’s the limit and even if you don’t succeed – you’ll do your best!

Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more […]

Startup to Watch: Bark.com

Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders and employees across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.

This week, we’re interviewing Kai Feller, Co-Founder of Bark.com – the UK’s biggest online local services marketplace. Bark.com is expanding fast across the globe, hiring equally as fast and fundamentally changing the way we source local services. It has also repeatedly shunned venture capital opportunities, preferring instead to be self-funded.

Hi Kai! What would you say Bark.com’s mission is?

Bark’s mission is to ultimately be the Amazon of services. We want to bring services online and into the 21st century as we feel that this side of things has been left behind. It’s easy to buy and sell products online, but it’s not easy to buy and sell services online and we’re at the forefront of companies changing this. We’ve only just got rid of the yellow pages! The marketplace for services is still very old-fashioned.

On the consumer side, we want individuals to come on Bark.com and be able to find a professional for any service they are looking for and a solution that fits their needs. For example, if they are looking for a dog walker, we want to give them the option of buying that service there and then, or just browsing options for purchase at a later date. Alternatively, they could be looking for a web designer – we want to provide the experience that they want and need.

On the professional side, we want to help service providers grow their businesses by getting online and connecting with customers. They are not usually online marketing professionals, so we want to take that burden away from them and allow them to focus on what they are good at – providing their services; be they carpentry, nails or hair, for example. We want to help these professionals across the globe.

Can you tell us about your growth over the past few years? What’s next for Bark.com in the UK and globally?

We launched in January 2015 and started off in a typical startup style: in a flat, bootstrapping something together. We spent the first couple of years throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. We tried three different business models and finally found one that worked for us a couple of years ago, which I would say transformed us into a ‘proper company’.

Now we’re a team of 50 all working out of our Paddington office. Bark.com is live in the US, South Africa and Canada as well as the UK, but we don’t currently have any workers outside of the UK. We run all of our global operations from our London office. On a separate note, we’re also cash generative and profitable – quite significantly. We’re already turning over well over £20m. We urgently need to reinvest in the hiring side to accelerate growth even more, so expect to see us hiring like crazy in 2020!

I would still say though that Bark is in beta. We have a product up and running, but we recognise it’s still imperfect and a lot of 2020 will be focused on really making it a better experience for the end user. We want to build something properly powerful and valuable. On the consumer side, we want to create tailored experiences for everyone coming on the site. On the professional side, we want to provide a suite of tools to facilitate that and turn Bark into an absolute must for any small business, instead of a value-adding thing. To do something like that, we need an amazing team, which is why recruitment is a massive priority for us in 2020. We need the best people.

We’ll also continue expanding internationally in 2020. We’re looking at launching in 5-10 new countries next year, all from the UK, so keep your eyes peeled!

What do you look for in an employee?

We look for people that are confident and exceptional. They must have great written and verbal communication skills (this is crucial), and must be very personable and a team player. Everyone in the Bark team is like that and if they’re not, they aren’t going to fit. Like any start up we face complex problems on a daily basis and we move very fast, so communication is incredibly important.

If you’re results-driven, innovative and a team player – you’ll fit right in at Bark.com. We want people that thrive on autonomy and make jumps, not steps. This is a pretty big deal to us, because we’re still at the stage where you can make a jump and add 20% to the business.

Ambitious and driven people also do well here. We love people that are passionate and like being challenged. This is especially important because we’re growing rapidly and looking to expand our team from 50 to 100 next year. This will naturally mean shifting more responsibility onto the team, so we need people that are adaptable, switched on, smart and ambitious.

We also want people who contribute to our company culture. You need to enjoy who you are working with as this is what keeps people motivated and thriving.

Do you offer any company perks?

A whole suite of them. We offer share options, private healthcare, a fully stocked kitchen, team lunches every friday and regular socials once a month, among other things. When we have our socials, they’re pretty huge and we definitely don’t hold back!

We also (and most importantly!) offer an unsolved problem and a challenging puzzle for employees to wrap their heads around. How do we transform Bark.com into the Amazon of services?

What’s your professional background? Do you have any advice for young people just starting their careers?

When I left university, I had a few options on the table. I had an offer from Cambridge to do a masters and an offer from JP Morgan in the investment banking division. Instead, I started a business called Socialite – which launched my career in the startup space and really led me to where I am today.

In terms of advice I would give young people just starting their careers, I would say do something that you’re passionate about, find interesting and think you could be involved in for the rest of your life. Once you get started in a career, it can be quite difficult to change path. Also, be ambitious and aim high. It’s better to aim high and only achieve half of your goals (or fail!) than to not to have difficult and ambitious goals in the first place. Lastly, network like crazy! I cannot stress enough how important this is. Not only will networking open up a load of opportunities, but it will also help you launch your own startup (if this is what you want!)

Do you have any advice for those thinking about founding their own startup but currently unsure?

If you have a startup idea, don’t think it’s “all in or all out”. Bootstrap something and play around with how it would work. If you are passionate about it, spend your free time on it: evenings, weekends and holidays. Also, speak to as many people as possible about your idea and get involved in the UK startup scene – which really is incredible and very nurturing. There are a tonne of people willing to give you advice and help you out.

If you do end up doing it full-time, be prepared for the hard work! Everyone faces hurdles and challenges (this is practically part of the job description!) and the people who are successful are the people who persevere.